Flying the blokey skies

Groucho Marx once mentioned not wanting to join a club that would have him as a member. That witticism may never have been more appropriate than for the club I just signed up for, the LynxJet Mile High Club.
Inspired by a predictably popular article on this website, I joined up so I could visit the ‘exclusive’ lounge and experience the website’s cheesy titillation at full bore.
Just to blog about it, you understand. It’s an interesting sociological and business story. With breasts.

And now apparently my membership card is coming in the mail. I can’t wait to enter what I’m sure will be an enthralling world of deodorant-related benefits and privileges.
In the spirit of FHM and Ralph‘s ‘new lad’ culture, the Lynx site justifies something that would normally be termed sexist is justified by virtue of it being ‘ironic’. Because when its ‘mostesses’ flash their bazoombas at fans and provide massages right around the country, they do so with an air of wry self-parody. And because everyone involved knows it’s tacky, it’s not exploitative – it’s fun.
And the beautiful thing is, of course, that the male libido is completely irony proof. So we fellas get our jollies – guilt free. Woo hoo. Hell yeah. Rrrrooowww! Etc.
It’s been working brilliantly well. I can scarcely believe it, but the SMH article reckons that this strategy has netted them 85% of male deodorant sales in supermarkets. Talk about your Lynx effect. What a brilliant way to convince guys to make themselves smell like a blend of musk LifeSavers and over-ripe tropical fruit.
And you still think that the LynxJet vision of airborne hot tubs is sexist? Well, watch out, because you’re about to get egg on your face. “The two most senior marketing executives responsible for Lynx are women and “very much supportive” of the strategy,” says the spokesperson. Who just happens to be a man. But he says the women are into it. So there.
While marvelling at the patriarchy’s latest brilliant device for getting women to wear hardly any clothes, I realised that there is a victim in all this. As opposed to those wonderfully empowered ‘mostesses’, of course. And that is the Bahamas’ very own LynxAir, an “island happy, people friendly airline flying people, parcels and mail to hot spots in the Caribbean.”
Apparently lots of people think that LynxJet is a real airline, and are genuinely disappointed to learn it isn’t. So imagine the people who sign up to fly Lynx Air around the Caribbean only to discover no onboard massage, hot tubs or even mostesses.
JetStar nixed the idea of painting a plane in the LynxJet insignia, but those nifty marketing boffins at Unilever (a phallic image if ever I’ve heard one) shouldn’t give up on their dream of seeing their raunchy airline actually existing. All they need is a partnership with those other crusaders for women’s liberation, Hooters Air.Dominic Knight